


MIA

by ruff_ethereal



Category: Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alcohol, Blood, Explicit Language, F/M, Major Original Character(s), Mild Language, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 03:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8951269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruff_ethereal/pseuds/ruff_ethereal
Summary: Two decades after Penn mysteriously disappeared without a trace, he resurfaces at Sashi's apartment door. Is this a chance to finally confess her feelings to him? Maybe. Is she going to punch him in the face for showing up without prior warning? Definitely.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [radiowrittenheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiowrittenheart/gifts).



> "MIA" = Missing In Action
> 
> A military acronym used to denote a soldier whose whereabouts are unknown, generally presumed dead.

“Happy birthday, Lieutenant Kobayashi!”

Sashi flinched, having been fully submerged in reports, paperwork, and tentative schedules for god-knows-how-long a moment before. She reluctantly spun away from her monitor and to the handful of NYPD officers with party hats beside her desk, a chocolate birthday cake, several bottles of soda, paper plates, plastic utensils, and red solo cups held up between them. She forced a grateful smile on her face up until someone blew a party blower and the tail end came just a _little_ too close to her face.

“Thanks, everyone,” she said as she tried not to scowl too hard, “but you _really_ didn't have to.”

“Oh, but Sarge, we wanted to!” said Detective Lao, the leader of the group. “You're always working overtime and through your lunch break, you need to kick back and relax sometime before you burn out!”

Sashi shot her a look. “What do you think I do at home?”

Lao smirked. “Things best not discussed in public or especially in the workplace,” she replied casually.

The officers around her choked and did their best to suppress their giggles. Sashi ignored them and their ensuing apologies. “Just cut the cake and start handing out plates and soda already,” she said flatly. “I've still got plenty of work to do.” She gestured a hand to her monitor.

“Aren't you going to make a wish, Sarge?” Lao said, holding up the cake and showing off the lone candle burning in its center.

“Later, when I don't have more important things to deal with,” Sashi replied, putting her hands back on her keyboard and mouse for emphasis.

“Alright then, Sarge,” Lao said as she set the cake down and someone handed her a knife.

Sashi wasn't surprised to see officers leaving as soon as they got their cake and soda, nor did she mind; aside from knowing all of their names and faces for administrative reasons, she didn't really talk with any of them outside of cases, their relationships purely professional.

All of them except Lao, at least, who had been persistently trying to befriend her since Sashi was still officially her Sergeant. “So, Sarge, any special plans for celebrating your big day?” she asked as she set the almost gone cake and last of bottle soda down on her desk, the candle still burning and starting to melt.

“I'm having dinner with my family next week,” Sashi replied as sent off an e-mail.

Lao shot her a playful look. “You know what I mean, Sarge~”

Sashi glared at her over her shoulder. “Why are you so invested in my love life, Lao?”

Lao's face softened. “Because, I _like you_ , Sarge, and you may not realize it, but you wear your 'Still Single and Still Looking' heart on your sleeve, and I know it makes you unhappy. And I don't like you unhappy.” She paused. “Well, unhappier than _usual_ , anyway.”

Sashi huffed and turned back to her monitor, opening a new batch of reports.

“All that talk of the single life being dead by your thirties is a BS, you know,” Lao said. “If anything, it drastically cuts out the number of… ah… jerks, you're a lot more likely to find someone willing to commit!”

“I think I'm pretty sure that I'll never go within a mile of the dating scene ever again, Lao,” Sashi growled, hitting her enter key a lot harder than she needed to.

Lao's eyebrows rose. “Ahh...” she said, nodding her head. “Got an ex you regret breaking up with?”

Sashi didn't reply.

“Or someone you regret never asking out, then.”

Still no reply.

“Better late than never, Sarge!” Lao smiled. “These days there's no shame in looking for or messaging your lost loves on Facebook.”

The smile disappeared as Sashi suddenly stopped working, before she hung her head and looked like she was about to cry.

Lao turned sheepish. “I… fucked up, didn't I, Sarge…?” she mumbled.

Sashi tilted her head up, sucked in a deep breath, and let it go slowly. “Yes,” she said flatly, “yes you did.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Sashi looked at her from the corner of her eye. “Depends: do you want to listen to an old woman ramble about her regrets?”

Lao brightened up. “You know I've always got time for you, Sarge! And c'mon: you're not THAT old!”

Sashi's eye twitched.

“… sorry…”

Sashi locked her workstation and told the system she was on break. She picked up her memo pad, scribbled something onto it, and posted it on by her and Lao's cake and soda. It read:

Touch this and you die.

\- Lt. K

“Walk with me,” she said as she got up and went around her desk.

“Where to, Sarge?” Lao asked as she fell in step with her.

“Around the block; what I'm about to tell you stays between us, alright?”

“Promise,” Lao said, holding up both hands up in the scout's salute.

They stepped out of the their precinct and into the busy streets of New York. Throngs of people crushed and bumped into them from every direction; cars stalled in traffic and at stoplights honked and their driver's stuck their heads out of their windows and yelled; street carts and food trucks called out, trying to entice customers and drown out their competitors by sheer volume.

If you wanted to hold a conversation and guarantee almost little to no risk of eavesdroppers, do it in the middle of a crowded street, Sashi always said.

She moved through the crowds easily, her muscular and compact frame allowing her to slip in through gaps and stay standing if someone bumped into her. Lao fought through the crowds, her tall and lanky form much more prone to getting caught in someone's shoulders and pulled away with the tides of commuters.

“You ready?” Sashi called out to Lao.

“Yes!” Lao yelled back as she muttered apologies to people she was pushing past.

“Alright,” Sashi asked as she deflty dodged a muscular man carrying two large briefcases. “Ask away.”

“Is it a guy, a girl, or non-binary?” Lao asked, apologizing to said man after she bumped into him.

“Guy.”

“Taken?”

Sashi shuddered. “Sure as hell hope not!”

“Bad break-up?”

“We had to have been together first for that...”

“Big falling out, blocked on Facebook, never speaking to you again deal?” Lao asked as they began to near the corner.

“Close: he dropped off the face of the Earth, and no one knows where he is, or what the hell happened.” Sashi said as she weaved through some people waiting for the crossing light.

“C'mon, Sarge, no one just disappears these days!” Lao said as she curved around the group and ran up to Sashi's side. “And I should know: I track down people all the time.”

“Well he managed to do it anyway,” Sashi said, lowering her voice as they went down a relatively peaceful, uncrowded stretch of sidewalk.

“This is going to sound real stupid, but did you file a missing person report?” Lao said, slowing her pace now that the sidewalk wasn't packed.

“I did, and so did pretty much all of his relatives. Couldn't pull many strings as he was studying in Europe at the time.”

“Immediate family?”

“Made peace with it. You could say suddenly, mysteriously disappearing isn't new to them.”

Lao whispered a curse in Hokkien. “Friends, roommates?”

“Stranger to all of them, and the only one I can ask is somewhere in a hippie commune in the Australian Outback—no technology, or even electricity.”

Lao slowed to think. “He had to have left clues _somewhere_.”

“You could check his social media accounts and break into his personal e-mail, if you can find it,” Sashi spat. “One day, he was talking about how great his thesis was going to be, and the next, _nada_.”

“Didn't his school notice?”

“They did. But the media and the administration will only give a missing student case so much time and attention before a newer, juicier headline takes its place.”

The two of them walked in silence as they neared another corner again.

Lao frowned as she saw the impending sea of people just up ahead. She turned to Sashi. “Do you think he's, you know, dead?”

“No,” Sashi replied. “Talked to everyone I could, they feel the same way I do—he's alive out there, somewhere. And I knew his type: didn't quit, and if he had to go out, the whole world will know about it.”

Lao nodded. “The adventuring type?” she asked as she they rounded the corner.

“We all were,” Sashi said wistfully. “A Dream Team.”

“What were you guys, sports team?” Lao yelled as she dove back into the sea of pedestrians. “MMO guild? Club members at school?”

“It's a long story!” Sashi yelled back, falling back with Lao as the crowd was much thicker and pushier here. “All you need to know is that we spent a lot time together we wouldn't have otherwise, saw each other at our best and worst, and trusted each other with our lives.”

“Sounds like you were all pretty close!” Lao said as she reached out and grabbed Sashi's shoulder to avoid getting swept away with the crowd.

Sashi didn't mind. “We were,” she replied as she started to elbow and push her way through for the both of them.

“What happened?” Lao said as annoyed and oblivious pedestrians streamed by Sashi's sides.

“Life did,” Sashi replied. “We knew we were only ever going to be together till the end of high school. We had plans after graduation, none of which involved trying to stay together.”

“Wow. That must have been _forever_ ago!”

Sashi slowed down to glare at Lao over her shoulder. “And what about it…?” she said.

“Nothing!” Lao said innocently. “Didn't you at try to text, e-mail, WhatsApp? Internet access is pretty much everywhere, anytime now.”

Sashi shook her head before she turned back to the crowds. “Doesn't count for shit if you're too swamped with schoolwork to call, or you're backpacking out in the Himalayas on a budget.”

“Do you miss them?”

Sashi suddenly stopped and turned around. “What the fuck kind of question is that?” she snapped, standing her ground as people bumped into her and the flow of pedestrian traffic around her was stalled.

Lao staggered to a stop in front of her, looking more than a little worried for her safety.

Sashi's lips were curled into a scowl, but her eyes watered. “Of course I miss them,” she whispered. “Every _goddamn_ day since we had that crazy night out in the city, before we split up and never saw each other ever again...”

The backlog worsened, pedestrians glared at the two of them as they streamed past their sides; choice words and idle threats were thrown with careless abandon, but Sashi ignored them all.

Lao carefully put her hand on her shoulder. “Uh, Sarge, I think we better get moving...” she muttered, eying the disdainful faces all around them.

Sashi turned around and set off again, marching straight through the crowds like a torpedo through water, complete with slipstream for Lao to run behind. She kept up the pace until they rounded the corner, and the crowds thinned once more.

Sashi stopped and leaned against a wall, tears dripping down her cheeks. Lao solemnly stood beside her.

“I can't believe I'm actually, seriously saying this, but if there were some way to turn back time, to the first day we met or just before we split up... there's little I wouldn't give for it,” Sashi mumbled as she took her glasses off, and wiped her tears on her sleeve.

Then, she squared her shoulders, and set off at a faster pace than before. Lao started taking extra long strides to keep up.

“Maybe there's a guy out here like him, Sarge,” Lao said.

“Remind me to kick myself later for using another cliché—he's _definitely_ one of a kind.”

“Then maybe one of these days, he'll resurface somewhere and call you over to catch up sometime.”

Sashi snorted. “Fat chance. 24 hours missing, we're already getting the grief counselors to tell them what to do if we don't find them.”

Lao shrugged. “You never know, Sarge! Stranger things have _definitely_ happened.” She smiled. “Maybe you can use your birthday wish for him. Just make sure not to say it out loud or tell anyone, or else it cancels out,” she said quickly.

“Right, and maybe I'll go write a letter to Santa Claus while I'm at it...” Sashi grumbled.

“ _Or_ you could give me his name, and I could start hitting up my--”

_Woop! Woop! Woop! Woop!_

Lao cursed, her beeping wristwatch telling her _her_ break was officially over. The two of them hurried it up back to the precinct and Sashi's desk without another word. Both plates and cups were untouched, and the candle was still burning, albeit it had melted into a nub and the wax was forming a disgusting, gooey mess on top of the icing.

“Don't lose hope, Sarge!” Lao said as she grabbed her cake and soda. “And remember your birthday wish!” she yelled as she dashed back to her workstation.

Sashi watched her go, sighed, and turned back to her cake and soda. She planned to blow out her candle without making a wish, start picking wax off of the icing, before she put it in the station fridge until after her shift.

She stopped as she saw the flickering flame, still doing its damnedest to stay alive, as if refused to go out until she had made her wish.

It was stupid. A _very_ long shot. Something that'd make her feel better against all reason, like a gambler's set of lucky numbers for the lottery.

But hell, she knew she'd done dumber things.

Sashi closed her eyes, and made a wish: _“Bring him back. Or just let me know where the hell he is. I'll take a convoluted clue that starts a whole chain of misadventures, if it means seeing him again.”_

Then, she blew out the candle, picked up her plate, and made her way to the nearest break room.

* * *

Sashi ate her birthday cake later that night, in the privacy of her own apartment and after a dinner composed of Turkish take-out—the good kind, as she'd decided to treat herself that night.

She gathered up greasy shawarma wrappers, paper plates, and empty plastic condiment bags, tossing them all into the jumbo sized trash can in the corner. She could have sworn she had just emptied it a few days ago, but frankly she wasn't too surprised to see it becoming full of take-out boxes and disposable containers this soon.

She started on the rest of her nightly routine: brushing her teeth, changing out of her uniform, and into a sweatshirt and jogging pants. Both items had been worn before, laying on her floor or hanging off her couch, but living alone and spending most of your days at work or out in the city made it _disturbingly_ easy to be disgusting.

She plopped down on her couch, a ratty, patched-up, but clean and vermin-free item she had picked up at a police auction a few years back. She dug between the cushions and found the remote for her TV, and prepared to settle down for a night of Netflix until she she could barely keep her eyes open.

“Happy birthday to me,” she muttered.

Just before she hit the power button, she heard a knock on her door.

A random, unexpected visitor at 11:37 PM was suspicious enough. More so when your few friends generally weren't the kind to drop by late at night without prior notice, and you were basically a total stranger to your neighbours. And living in New York tended to instill a sense of paranoia that people who lived outside of the big cities just didn't need.

Sashi put down her remote, carefully walked over to her door, and grabbed the baseball bat propped up nearby before she put her eye to the peephole. (Every apartment complex and condo these days offered no shortage of electronic and “cutting edge” security features, but frankly, she preferred things simple, manual, and VERY difficult to turn against her.)

She had to strain to make out whoever was outside, thanks to the hallway lights being dimmed for the night. She briefly wondered who in the hell it could be, before her eyes widened, she dropped the bat, and threw her door open.

His curly red hair had been straightened, cut, and dyed platinum blonde, but she'd recognize those blue eyes and that dorky smile anywhere.

She blinked, blinked a few more times, then slapped herself to make _sure_ that she wasn't hallucinating from so much overtime, too little sleep, and more caffeine than should be consumed by any human.

The figure at her door didn't change, nor did he mysteriously disappear.

“Penn…?!” Sashi whispered.

“Hey, Sash!” Penn said as he casually leaned on the side of her door with one arm. “I know this is _real_ sudden, but can I crash at your place tonight?”

It was so cliché Sashi had to resist the urge to laugh. The lost love, crawling back to her door after a decade or so had passed, and the both of them had become mature, experienced adults who now knew that what they had wasn't a hormonally charged teenaged attraction, it was the Real Deal.

And on the eve of her birthday, no less.

She wasn't going to rush into his arms, hug him, and tell him all about how much she missed him in between passionate kisses, though. She was going to reintroduce her fist to his jaw, and remind him just why it was you didn't piss her off with stunts like disappearing for decades and resurfacing without any warning.

She'd just curled her hand into a fist when she realized what he was wearing: a tuxedo, all white up top with black pants, his red bow tie hanging undone around his neck, almost every inch of his outfit riddled with holes and blood.

Fresh blood.

Penn's blood.

She grabbed Penn by his shirt collar. He yelped in pain, but she didn't care. “Jesus _fuck,_ Penn! Get in here!” she yelled as she pulled him in.

Penn stumbled in after her. Sashi's heart started pounding several beats faster when she noticed he was limping—badly.

She peered out her door, looked up and down the hallways. Even with the poor lighting, she could see he hadn't trailed blood all over from the elevator or the stairs, just a huge concentration of red blotches on her welcome mat where Penn had been standing for god-knows-how-long.

She decided that particular mystery would have to wait for later as she pulled the mat inside, slammed her door shut and locked it. She turned around and saw Penn standing to the side of her couch, looking conflicted.

“Do you have some towels you won't mind throwing out later?” he asked sheepishly.

She shot him a look of disbelief and concern. “Penn, _fuck_ the couch! If you bleed all over it, I'll just take it back, set it on fire, and get a new one!” she yelled as she rushed to her kitchen.

At this point, most people would _strongly_ suggest calling an ambulance or driving Penn to the hospital, but Sashi had been in enough covert operations to know the when that was going to be much more trouble than it was worth.

Penn limped to the couch and carefully eased himself onto it, holding onto one of the arms for dear life, biting his lip and suppressing a cry of pain as he sank into the cushions. Sashi threw open her kitchen cabinet and hauled her massive first aid kit back to her living room.

Sashi dropped it on the floor. _Thud._ She knelt down and opened the super-deluxe tackle box.

Penn whistled as he saw her open the racks upon racks of medical supplies within. “Got a defibrillator in there, too?” he asked.

“Shut the fuck up and take your clothes off,” Sashi said as she pulled out as many bandages as she had, surgical scissors, first aid spray, and plenty of tape. “Where'd you get shot?”

“ _Pretty much_ everywhere, but mostly center of mass,” Penn said as he shrugged off his tuxedo jacket and opened the buttons of his shirt. Sashi would have marveled at how he'd transformed over the years, going from a flimsy human noodle to a well-chiseled cover model for Men's Fitness, if his muscles weren't covered in ugly scars, bullet wounds, and fresh blood still pouring out of them.

Sashi was shaking her can of first-aid spray, when Penn reached into his pockets and handed her a bottle. “Use this,” he said.

She looked at it—aluminum, without a print label or any sort design whatsoever, with text in language she couldn't read under a red cross logo. She shrugged, uncapped it, and began patching him up.

The mountain of questions she had for him grew. Why he was in a get up straight out of Spy World? Who had been shooting at him, and why? What was the stuff inside his mystery bottle, and where did he get it? Why had he chosen her place of all locations to use as a safehouse, and why now? She made a mental note to do everything in her power to keep him here, until he gave her some _very_ good answers.

She didn't know how long it took to get every single hole found, treated, and patched up. By the end of it, Penn was naked except for his bandages and a pair of white boxers with stylized zeros, Sashi had used up all of the spray and a huge chunk of her very-well stocked first aid-kit, and the two of them were all too happy to collapse on the couch, exhausted.

Penn slumped on one side, his arms hanging behind the back of the couch to help stem the leftover bleeding. Sashi sunk into the cushions on the other, trying to ignore the smell of blood, sweat, and whatever the hell it was she had treated him with. They caught their breaths and let their heart rates come back to normal now that the crisis was over.

“You wouldn't happen to have any pain killers on you, would you?” Penn asked. “Preferably something a LOT stronger than Tyenol or Aleve.”

“I got fuck-tons of booze that I never opened in my cabinets. Apparently people think I'm a closet alcoholic...” Sashi muttered.

Penn chuckled. “That'd work just fine. Should I get it, or should you?”

“Don't you dare move an inch from this couch, PZ,” Sashi growled as she got up. “You've just been shot god-knows-how-many times AND you owe me metric fuck-tons more of answers; I won't give you the opportunity to try and make a great escape from my fire escape or some shit like that.”

“I wouldn't even if I could,” Penn said, smiling innocently.

She glared at him before she headed back to her kitchen.

As she rarely cooked in general, in lieu of cooking pots, pans, and utensils, Sashi's kitchen was almost completely stuffed with alcohol of every shape, kind, and brand available except for the most expensive and exclusive bottles.

She had thought of just grabbing the first one that came within reach, but after seeing the sheer number of labels of both “supermarket discount aisle” and “locked in the backroom” quality, she suddenly felt very conscious about her choice.

“You drink anything in specific?” Sashi yelled over.

“Whiskey, if you got it!” Penn yelled back.

She paused. “Since when the hell did you start drinking booze?”

“Since you started saying four-letter words every other sentence!”

Sashi reached in and grabbed what she felt like was a good brand and vintage of whiskey. As she went to look for a glass and a cork opener, she wondered, how else had they changed since graduation? You could become an entirely different person over the course of a year, what more little over two decades? Were they even _remotely_ the same people as they were before?

She walked back into the living room with the bottle open and a regular drinking glass. “Before you ask, I don't know where the fuck the shot glasses are, nor do I feel like getting them out of the box if I did,” she said as she handed them to him.

“Don't sweat it, Sash: this is _more_ than enough,” Penn said as he took it. He poured with pracitced, effortless motions of a habitual drinker and a connoisseur, filling the glass up halfway before tilting the bottle back and twirling it so not a single drop was wasted.

He drank it with much less grace, all of that whiskey disappearing in a few gulps. It was an extremely large amount of alcohol, if Sashi's mingling at police balls and hanging out in bars told her anything.

Penn sighed happily, smiling and loosening up visibly. “Aaah… I _really_ needed that… thanks again, Sash.” He held the bottle over to Sashi. “Want some?”

She shuddered. “I don't drink,” she said as she held up her hand.

“It's really good whiskey, smooth and flows down your throat like liquid gold.”

“ _Molten_ liquid gold, I'll bet,” Sashi grumbled. “How does ANYONE actually like pouring fire down their throats?”

“You know what they say about acquired tastes?” Penn knocked back the glass and drained it. “Exactly that.”

“More like Stockholm Syndrome, if you ask me,” she muttered darkly.

Penn shrugged. “More for me, then!” he beamed.

Sashi's eyes narrowed. She snatched the bottle from his hands, set it down on the floor and well out of his reach. “Trying to get so drunk you'll pass out before you give me some answers?” she growled.

Penn looked offended. “Sashi, please! Do you really think I'd do something like that to you?”

“So prove it: talk. And don't try to dodge the question or pull any of your vague, non-answers! You owe me for patching you up and bleeding all over my couch, among _plenty_ of other things.”

Penn nodded sheepishly. He looked up at the ceiling, and whistled. “Geeze, where do I start?”

“Maybe after you completely dropped off the map?” Sashi offered. “One day, you're bragging about how great your thesis is going to be, then after that, nothing. I've got a feeling that was the start of the whole chain of events leading to you bleeding on my doorstep.”

Penn chuckled. “Close,” he said. “I actually went on full social media blackout to get it done on time. It was actually the night before I was supposed to defend it.”

“What was it about, anyway?”

Penn grinned. “What else? Heroes. Specifically, it was all about the importance of mythological heroes and superhuman figures in our culture since the beginning of time and the present day, serving as role models, moral ideals given a face, and catchy stories that children will eat up, along with being a reflection of the society's standards and environment at the time of creation.”

“So you were too busy drawing parallels to Hercules and Superman to send me or Boone a text message?” Sashi

Penn shot her a look. “To be fair, you were too busy at the police academy to send me or Boone one, too.”

Sashi sheepishly looked away.

“Anyway, it was during my research that I started noticing something. Coincidences, you could say—really odd, really strange coincidences.”

Sashi looked at him with raised eyebrows.

Penn smiled. “Have you ever noticed how a lot of the mythologies of ancient cultures and tribes have these really big parallels to each other? Countries that could be situated on the opposite sides of the globe, and yet they'd both have mermaid myths, tales of nigh-invincible warriors who have to stand up to vicious dragons and horrible trolls, tiny people who live in forest, going about performing magic and playing pranks on people.

“Almost as if they were seeing the exact same thing, just in different places...”

Sashi's eyes widened. “Don't tell me...”

Penn grinned. “The Loch Ness Monster?”

“Sea Dragon World.”

“Big Foot and the Yeti of the Himalayas?”

“The Aaaaaahhhh! Mountains in Winter Wonderland World.”

“Tunguska?”

“Actual alien crash landing, after a portal accident,” Sashi said flatly.

“Close, but not quite,” Penn said. “It was actually two very unlucky hikers who decided to poke a stick at a damaged and unstable reactor from a crashed alien ship from another dimension. The aliens themselves were trying to find high ground to set up a radio beacon.

“It was a pretty gnarly explosion, they said,” Penn continued. “Though they were honestly sorry they, you know, accidentally caused permanent ecological damage and killed two guys.”

Sashi stared at him for a few moments. “Oh my fucking god...” she muttered as she put her head in her hands. “So the conspiracy theories are all true?”

“Not all of them. But a lot of them got really close. Not every investigator of the paranormal and the unexplained gets let in on the secret, but a whole lot of us started out as kids who never stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy—or better yet, had actually zapped into their home dimensions and had met them first hand.”

Sashi held her hand up. “So let me guess: you dropped off the face of the earth to go join some secret organization, spending your days covering up extra-dimensional screw-ups and making sure everything on this planet is local.”

“Or within the solar system, or a legal trans-dimensional visitor,” Penn added. “We're kind of like Multiverse Immigration Police.”

“And that's how you managed to get here?”

Penn held up his wrist. Sashi had noticed the expensive looking watch on his wrist earlier, but thought it was just a regular watch. “It can't zap me across the multiverse like a MUT, but it can take me almost anywhere within a dimension,” he explained.

Sashi nodded. “So never saying goodbye, no one being able to find you, your hair...?”

“All part of the job,” Penn replied. “Hard to maintain assumed identities when someone could notice you and call you by a different name.”

“So why now?” Sashi asked. “Why show up at my place, after all these years?” She paused. “Wait... there's not going to be angry goons busting down my door and trying to finish the job, is there...?” she asked, more annoyed than fearful.

Penn shook his head. “The others got that covered. Trust me, they're _really_ good.”

Sashi nodded. “But what about my other question? Since you could teleport anywhere in the world, why here, and not one of the secret bases you probably have deep underneath Cleveland or somewhere?”

Penn shifted about nervously, pulling his arms back to his sides, looking around everywhere except at Sashi. “Well, it was kind of, you know, a contingency plan, in case it was too late to save me… it did look _really_ bad earlier.”

“Like a horror movie,” Sashi thought as she scowled. “And what was that contingency plan for...?”

Penn reluctantly looked her in the eyes. “Sashi, I, uh… well, you see...” he rambled on.

Sashi groaned. “Spit it out already, before I have to pull it of you myself!”

“I love you.”

Sashi blinked, stunned.

Penn kept on going. “I have been since high school. Not since the day I met you, because honestly you just scared the crap out of me—and still do, actually! But after all those missions, working as a team, and hanging out with you, I kinda, sorta, realized that I… you know, like you in that way.”

“So why didn't you ever tell me…?” Sashi asked.

Penn looked away. “Lots of reasons. I only ever stopped denying it a few months before graduation. There was your plan to go to police academy, my plan to move across the world for college, and long-distance relationships having a really spotty track record. But mostly, I guess it was just because I was afraid—of you saying no, ruining our friendship and making our last memory together be how I ruined everything.”

Sashi stared at him, speechless.

Penn stared at the ceiling, and whistled. “Wow. That all sounded _way_ sadder and more desperate than I thought it would be.” He turned back to her, looking more vulnerable and scared than she'd ever seen him. “I'm sorry, Sash, I--”

“Penn.”

Penn stopped and looked at her.

“Shut up.”

He did.

Sashi took a deep breath, and let it go. She crawled over to him and sat on her knees. “First of all--”

_Smack._

Penn reeled as his cheek glowed with a new, pink hand-shaped mark.

“ _Fuck you,_ for disappearing like that, and never telling anyone. I think it should have been _pretty_ obvious that we could trust your friends and family with giant, reality-as-you-knew-it-shattering secrets, and before you go saying it's against the rules? I _know_ you. You would have found a loophole and jumped through it as many times as you possibly could.”

Penn hung his head.

Sashi put her hand on his chin, tilted his head up so they were face-to-face. “And second of all--!”

Penn closed his eyes and braced himself.

Sashi hesitated for a moment, before she kissed him.

… Or, at least, that was the intention.

_Thunk._

Their foreheads smashed together, teeth clacked against the other. The two of them reeled in pain.

“I can get the slap, but was the headbutt _really_ necessary...?” Penn moaned.

“It was _supposed_ to be a _kiss,_ ” Sashi groaned.

“Okay: once the room stops spinning, we are going to try this again, but slowly, more of a kiss than a mouth-punch”

Sashi made an affirmative grunt.

They recovered, and tried again.

It was a lot more awkward than the first now that Penn knew what was coming. They wasted _way_ too much time with false starts, nervously looking at each other, and just sitting there trying to uncomfortably fidget the least amount possible.

Thoughts raced through Sashi's mind: did Penn still want to kiss her after he, like all of her exes, had experienced first hand how _bad_ she was at it? Was he having second thoughts about his attraction to her in the first place? Was he lying about the whole thing?

It wouldn't exactly be beyond a secret agent to lie about being attracted or even in love with someone; she knew, from so many missions trying to make deluded officials and lovesick saps see the light that love was an infinitely better tool for manipulation than pure, base lust.

Finally, they'd both had enough of the idling and the looking like they were going to do it before backing out. Sashi closed her eyes and leaned in—slowly—and Penn did the same.

Their lips touched, and suddenly Sashi hi found herself noticing so many things at once: how soft and warm Penn's lips were; how effortlessly he moved his mouth against hers; the faint, warm tingle she felt on her skin. His hands, the fingers of one through her hair, cradling the back of her head and holding her steady; the other cupping the small of her back. The metallic scent of blood, the sharp anesthetic odour of the spray she'd treated him with, the acrid scent of dried sweat—both hers and Penn's.

It was a pretty messed up scene, she realized: two people kissing on a blood-stained couch, one wearing nothing but his underwear and fresh, blood-stained bandages, the other in old clothes that should have been washed instead of put back on one more time, completely ignoring all the horrible things that would have been a turn-off to normal people, to say the least.

But then again, she never did like “normal.”

Penn broke the kiss. As he pulled away, he bit down on Sashi's bottom lip.

Sashi made a noise.

Penn chuckled softly. “Gee, never heard that from you before...” he said as he pulled his hands back.

“ _Holy shit...”_ Sashi whispered.

“Yeah… my training was a lot more, ah, 'holistic' than anything Phyllis ever gave us.”

Sashi nodded slowly. She put her fingers to her still tingling lips, wiped off whatever was there. She looked at the faint, pinkish smear that came off, and looked back up at Penn. “Is this… lipstick...?”

“Yeah,” Penn said. “Don't worry—I _never_ use the variety with the drugs in them; too many potential mishaps.”

“ _Holy shit...”_ Sashi mumbled again as she wiped it off on her pants, before she sat down beside Penn.

The two of them were quiet as they let what just happened sink in.

“So…” Penn started, “how long have you known that you liked me back?”

Sashi shrugged. “Dunno. It was definitely after I stopped dating guys who I _thought_ was my type, and somewhere in between my trying different types of guys and when I realized I was subconsciously picking out guys that were knock-offs of you.”

Penn laughed. “Lots of skinny redheads, then?”

Sashi glared at him. “Oh, fuck you!” She sheepishly looked away. “… And yes.”

Penn put a hand on her shoulder. “If it makes you feel better, on my side, they were a _lot_ of short and angry women who could and would kick my ass seven-thousand ways to Sunday.”

Sashi snorted. “ _Wow_. Aren't we just the cheesy romance cliché: teenage friends who were too scared to ask the other out until they wasted two decades of their lives.”

“I like to think of it in a more positive light,” Penn said, holding his hands up like a director trying to frame a shot, “more... 'spent some time to figure out what it was they really wanted.'”

“The answer being you,” Sashi said she leaned into him, nestled her head on the least bandaged part of his chest. She closed her eyes, blinked back her tears and smiled. “I missed you, PZ...”

Penn put his hand on her side and gently pulled closer. “Missed you too, Sash.”

Sashi looked up at him. “You think you could go find Boone next? Bring the team back together for a long overdue reunion?”

Penn yawned. “Maybe tomorrow… been kind of a long day, and an even longer night...”

Sashi looked at the wall clock above her TV. 2:15 AM. She suddenly and regretfully remembered that she generally needed to be up at 6 AM to make it to work.

“You want to go move to my bed?” Sashi asked. “I got a queen sized so I didn't have to change the sheets as often.”

“What, you sleep on one side then change when it gets too filthy?”

“Yes.”

Penn snorted with laughter. “That's gross, and strangely tempting. Seriously, though, all that alcohol and blood loss is making me feel a little lightheaded… probably best if I stay here.”

“Then I'll go get us both some blankets,” Sashi said as she got up.

Penn chuckled. “Afraid I'll disappear come morning?”

“This is just the tip of the iceberg of questions and mysteries you've been collecting since you disappeared, PZ!” Sashi said as she went down the hall and into her bedroom. “I'm not letting you leave until you answer most of them!”

“I'll avoid being infuriatingly vague as much as possible!” Penn yelled back.

She came back with a big blanket for the both of them, and the two found a position that was comfortable for the both of them—Sashi on bottom, Penn laying on top and to the side of her to avoid crushing her wounds, her head on his chest.

“Mmm...” she hummed as closed her eyes and rubbed her face against his rock-solid muscles, “I could get used to this~”

“Ditto that,” Penn said as he looped an arm over her. “And Sash?”

She looked up at him.“What?”

“Thanks for everything.”

“Don't thank me yet, Penn...” she mumbled, grinning as closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Sashi woke up in her bed than on her couch, a breakfast combo from Dunkin' Donuts waiting on her kitchen table, and Penn nowhere in sight. The sandwich and the coffee were still warm, and the receipt said he had bought it not ten minutes ago. She flipped the paper and found something hastily scribbled on the back:

Duty called, sorry. :(

\- PZ

She examined the bag inside-and-out, leafed through the napkins, and scoured her apartment for anything else he could have written on, but that was all he wrote—no contact number, no address, no instructions on how the hell she was ever supposed to meet him again, if he hadn't been planning completely disappearing once again.

Sashi was no stranger to one night stands. She had gone through much worse incidents where the men had not nearly been as courteous or so generous to buy her breakfast, to say the least. But all of those incidents combined couldn't compare to the _rage_ she felt right there and then.

She would have dedicated the whole day to tracking him down, called every connection and favour she had, maybe even tried to find Boone and rope him into the search, except duty was calling in the form of increasingly less patient texts from her superior asking where the hell she was.

Sashi scowled, her expression unchanging as she showered and scrubbed the smell of blood off of herself, she ran down the street eating her breakfast and balancing her coffee, and she rode the subway, surrounded by other commuters who were also having bad days and were unable or unwilling to give a fuck about the dangerous auras the people next to them were emitting.

She finally arrived at her precinct, two hours late. She angrily dumped the Dunkin' Donuts in a trashcan just outside the building, looked at Penn's note before tore up the receipt into and threw the tiny shreds in without a second glance. Then, she turned around, took a few deep breaths, and put on her most apologetic face before she headed in through the door.

Pissed off as she was about Penn, she really wanted to keep this job.

Lao was waiting for her in the lobby, a rarity. She smiled as she walked up to her. “There you are, Sarge!” she paused for a moment. “Bad night?”

“I don't want to talk about it,” Sashi muttered. She noticed the folder in Lao's hand, and the keys to the cruiser in the other.

“Got a special mission from up on high,” Lao explained as she handed the file over. “Don't know the details, or why it's the two of us specifically, but they wanted us to go check out this old abandoned building soon ASAP.”

Sashi opened the folder. Inside was the usual paperwork, along with two items attached via paperclips: a recent photo of an old, decrepit cinema that might have been built sometime in the 1920's, and an aged, yellowed flier for it--”The Starlight Lounge.”

Her eyes widened.

Lao frowned. “Uh, Sarge? Something I should know about…?”

Sashi calmly closed the file. “Lao,” she said quietly, “how fast can you drive?”

Lao quirked her eyebrows. “Legally speaking: as fast as traffic and stoplights permit. _Il_ legally speaking: how good of a reason can you give me?”

Sashi smiled at her. “You know how you always wanted to know _how_ exactly I learned to defuse a bomb, hack a computer, and make a Brain Eraser?”

Lao's face slowly split into a grin. “Strap yourself in tight, Sarge, we are going for a ride!”

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, Reagan. Hope I still got it.


End file.
